For the hundreds of thousands of people who participated in the 1963 March on Washington, many can recount the moving moments of that day.

But for a particular group of four ladies, the impact of the event is still profoundly felt decades later. All were young teens at the time of Martin Luther King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech, but didn’t attend the march.

Tsitsi Wakhisi, a journalism professor at the University of Miami, recently gathered three of her friends to celebrate the march’s 50th anniversary. Dr. Brenda Howard practices dentistry in Washington, D.C., Arberdella White-Davis worked for an anti-discrimination agency in Pennsylvania and Noluthando Crockett-Ntonga owns her own bakery in Maryland.

All agree that many of the career opportunities they experienced were a result of changes stemming from the march and larger civil rights movement.

The four women, who reflected on the original march before attending the commemorative event this year, joined others on Aug. 31 at the Lincoln Memorial to celebrate all those who marched in support of equal rights for racial minorities.